DEMJ5104_nothing_to_fear_report_140217_WEBv1

3 Germany Insight 3:

3 Germany Insight 3: Concerns about the EU depend on both pragmatic economic evaluations and emotive (latent) variables What drives citizens’ concerns about the EU? The complexities in the distribution of concern, demographic patterns and party identification – as well as the asymmetric relationship between fears about the EU and constitutional preferences about Germany’s relationship with the EU we have seen so far – suggest that the underlying drivers of anxiety about the EU are not uniform either. We indeed find that citizens’ concerns about the EU depend on two types of considerations: pragmatic economic concerns and emotive variables such as the degree of national and European identification. Pragmatic economic evaluations as a driving force of EU concerns We find a significant correlation between citizens’ concerns about the EU and their individual appraisal of their own economic prospects over the next 12 months. Those who have a negative outlook on their own position in the near future are also more concerned about the EU than those who have a positive outlook. Citizens who say that they have positive expectations for their own future are less likely to express unease across all five dimensions included in this study. However, the strength of the effect varies across the different domains of concern. It is least pronounced for the question of whether people fear a loss of influence in the world, where there is no significant difference between those thinking their own situation will be better and those who think there will be no change. In all cases the negative effect is stronger than the positive effect: the difference between those who expect their situation to become less favourable (and have greater fears) and those who expect no change is greater than the comparison between those expecting an improvement in their situation and those who expect no change.

197 Figure 10 Fears of respondents by expectations about how their personal situation will develop over the next 12 months (mean scores with 95% confidence intervals) Better No change Worse Low fear High fear 8 6 4 2 0 Loss of social security Loss of national identity Increasing EU payments Loss of influence in world Loss of jobs In their analysis, politicians and political analysts acknowledge that pragmatic economic considerations are the main driver of public concern. However, many focus on macroeconomic conditions. Looking at Germany’s outstanding economic indicators, they believe that citizens understand how the country’s current economic development is ‘completely different from that in the rest of Europe’ (MP, SPD) and how Germany is ‘an island of the fortunate’ (MP, SPD). Citizens are thought to understand that ‘Germany is only doing well [economically] when others [in the EU] are doing well’ (analyst). According to politicians, citizens’ pragmatic evaluations of Germany’s export-oriented economy and its prospects in a crisis-ridden EU give rise to general insecurity and an overall ‘gloomy outlook’. Concerns about Germany’s economic prosperity are ultimately related to a feeling of relative economic precariousness and an (unfounded) fear of social and economic decline. Few politicians differentiate between macroeconomic and individual evaluations of the economic situation: only two